'Ideologically, D K Shivakumar Is Rather RSS-ish'

'Shivakumar's relationship with the BJP and the RSS is not adversarial in the way Siddaramaiah's has been.'
'Siddaramaiah has publicly attacked the RSS on record; Shivakumar has made no such statement at any point.'

Karnataka's long-running game of thrones finally has a winner. After two-and-a -half years as chief minister, Siddaramaiah submitted his resignation following a breakfast meeting with his deputy D K Shivakumar, setting the stage for a transition that had been whispered about, negotiated over, and publicly denied for months.

Shivakumar was formally elected as the Congress Legislature Party leader and will take the oath of office on June 3.

Columnist and activist Shivasundar makes clear in the second part of an interview with Prsanna D Zore/Rediff, that this is not simply a changing of the guard between two rivals -- it is a moment that reveals something deeper about where Karnataka's Congress party is headed.

• PART 1 of the Interview: 'Shivakumar, Siddaramaiah Won't Sabotage One Another'

Does any of this give the BJP an opening to fish in troubled waters?

Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah will not sabotage one another -- but let us be precise: that is not the same as saying they will actively work together. Those are two very different things.

As for the BJP, the kind of poaching operation that worked in 2019 -- when 17 MLAs resigned, bringing down the Congress-JD-S coalition government -- is unlikely to succeed in the current configuration.

Shivakumar himself, you will recall, was the one who worked hardest to save that coalition government. He is not easily poachable.

But the larger danger is of a different kind altogether. The Congress' reluctance to frontally contest Hindutva politics, and its increasingly accommodative posture on communal questions, strengthens the BJP's social base -- and through that, its electoral prospects.

Take the Baba Budangiri shrine dispute, for instance. During the previous Siddaramaiah government itself, the state told the Supreme Court in 2025 that it had no objection to the appointment of a Hindu archaka at what has traditionally been a composite shrine -- a position that directly contradicts the 1991 Places of Worship Act.

The BJP's ascent in the Mangaluru region and coastal Karnataka -- they hold more than 25 seats there -- is substantially tied to their patronage of the Baba Budangiri cause. By endorsing that position, the Congress has effectively strengthened the BJP's ideological standing in that belt.

And then there is the Dharmasthala question. Shivakumar has publicly stated -- and this is on record -- that hundreds of D K Shivakumars would stand in solidarity with the pontiff of Dharmasthala, around whom serious allegations have swirled, and that he would not allow the institution to be questioned. He actually visited the shrine alongside other leaders.

This is not a departure from the Siddaramaiah government's approach -- it is a continuation and, in some respects, an intensification. It is, as I said, less a fight against fire and more a matter of fighting back to fire.

The late Gauri Lankesh frequently argued that Karnataka's politics was far more socially complex than the narrative usually imposed from Delhi. Looking at the current transition, do you feel the national media still misreads Karnataka by reducing everything to a Siddaramaiah versus Shivakumar story?

It always has, and it continues to do so. The state has its own political complexion, and it cannot be reduced to a binary rivalry between two individuals.

Power in Karnataka is a function of social coalition -- and those coalitions are in constant flux, realigning across party lines in ways that defy easy categorisation. Delhi simply does not have the patience for that complexity. It wants clean, legible, black-and-white narratives.

To be fair to both men: When the high command asked Siddaramaiah to step down, he did not make a spectacle of it. He submitted his resignation without fuss. And for his part, Shivakumar waited a full two-and-a-half years -- not without strain, but without a public rupture.

It was only when there was no indication whatsoever of Siddaramaiah relinquishing the post that Shivakumar began making his own moves -- visiting Delhi, consolidating his position.

Both men understand the stakes. Getting back into power, for an Opposition party in the current national climate -- with One Nation One Election on the horizon, and the full weight of the BJP machinery bearing down -- is extraordinarily difficult. They are not about to squander what they have.

One should also note that Shivakumar's relationship with the BJP and the RSS is not adversarial in the way Siddaramaiah's has been. Siddaramaiah has publicly attacked the RSS on record; Shivakumar has made no such statement, at any point.

Shivakumar vociferously defended the Karnataka government's celebration of the Ram temple consecration with RSS-ish arguments like ultimately we are all Hindus. He attended the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj and aprreciated Yogi for it. He was even instrumental in organising the Karnataka Kumbh Mela in T Narasipur in Mysuru district.

He has spoken of wanting to replicate the temple's model of mass religious mobilisation in Karnataka. He regards the BJP as an electoral adversary, nothing more.

Ideologically, as I would put it, he is rather RSS-ish.

'Shivakumar was never anti-establishment in any meaningful sense'

The Vokkaliga vote has traditionally been divided between the Congress and the JD-S. Do you see Shivakumar attempting to consolidate it permanently under the Congress umbrella while simultaneously retaining the AHINDA coalition?

That is widely assumed, but there is a mythology attached to it. Even an analysis of the 2024 Lok Sabha results complicates that picture.

Among the OBC communities -- and we have over 102 sub-castes within that category -- the Kuruba community is Siddaramaiah's principal base. During his tenure, there was a sustained BJP and JD-S campaign, not entirely without basis, suggesting that it was primarily Kurubas who were benefiting from welfare allocations, and that non-Kuruba OBCs were being overlooked.

This created real anti-Siddaramaiah and anti-Kuruba resentment within the broader OBC constituency. That realignment was visible in 2024, when the Congress was reduced to just nine Lok Sabha seats.

So the picture is considerably more fractured than the clean 'Vokkaliga consolidation plus AHINDA' formula suggests.

Both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar emerged from what might loosely be called anti-establishment traditions. Yet today they represent two quite distinct ideas of what the Congress should be.
If the late Devraj Urs represented one historical turning point in Karnataka politics, is this transition another such moment? How will historians look back on it?

There is a significant misapprehension in that framing, at least as it applies to Shivakumar. He was never anti-establishment in any meaningful sense. That characterisation belongs to Siddaramaiah -- and even then, it belongs to a specific period of his political life.

Siddaramaiah came through the people's movements, which shaped his early political sensibility. And crucially, he was part of the Janata Party at a time when the Congress was at the height of its dominance -- that is anti-establishment, by any reckoning.

Shivakumar has been in the Congress throughout -- in power and out of power, across all these decades -- fully invested in the politics of the establishment. He has never been anything else.

To be clear, Shivakumar was never the socialist type -- that distinction, such as it is, belonged to Siddaramaiah. But even Siddaramaiah governed with considerable fiscal caution, sticking closely to neoliberal economic discipline once he was actually in the CM's chair.